Recent social psychology research conducted by Mark Rubin, a researcher at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Tuesday, 13 June 2017

The Effects of Sexism on Women Miners' Mental Health and Job Satisfaction

In the
mining industry, women make up only 19.4% of the workers in Canada, 16.4% in
Australia, and 13.3% in the USA (Catalyst,
2015). In the present research, we investigated women’s experiences of
sexism in this male-dominated industry and how these experiences related
to women’s mental health and job satisfaction.

We surveyed
263 women miners from an Australian-based mining company that has operations in
Australia, Africa, South America, and South East Asia. Participants responded
to items about sexism, sense of belonging, mental health, and job satisfaction.

Our research
focused on two types of sexism: organizational
sexism and interpersonal sexism. Organizational
sexism refers to structural inequalities in an organization that are connected
with opportunities for promotion and career progression, job stability,
training, pay, competence, work-life balance, and performance standards. We
found that women miners who felt relatively disadvantaged on these dimensions
reported poorer mental health and job satisfaction. Hence, a potential strategy
to improve women miners’ mental health and job satisfaction may be to reduce
their perceived and actual disadvantage on these dimensions. This might be
achieved through a combination of structural changes in the workplace (e.g.,
more opportunities for women miners’ career progression) and/or greater
transparency in the gender-based similarities on these dimensions (e.g., publication
of workforce statistics demonstrating equality of pay).

Interpersonal
sexism refers to inappropriate images of women in the workplace,
sexual harassment, and sexist comments. Like organizational sexism, interpersonal sexism was negatively related to mental health and job satisfaction. Interpersonal sexism is more ingrained
in wider intergender relations in society, and addressing interpersonal sexism
effectively is likely to require a partnership between employers and (male and
female) employees.

A third variable that was associated with women miners' mental health and job satisfaction was sense of
belonging in the industry. This variable mediated the effects of organizational
sexism on job satisfaction. Hence, an additional approach towards improving
women miners’ job satisfaction may be to increase their sense of belonging. An
increased sense of belonging may be achieved by promoting community events both
within the female group of miners (i.e., as a group of “women miners”) and
within the industry as whole (i.e., women identifying as “miners”).

We also
found some interesting cross-country differences. Women who
worked at Australian mine sites reported significantly less organizational and
interpersonal sexism and fewer mental health problems than did women who worked at
African, South American, and South East Asian worksites. These differences may
reflect cross-cultural differences, with Australia’s more progressive Western
culture prescribing less sexism and better mental health practices in the
workplace.

It is important to note that our study’s cross-sectional correlational design
prevents clear conclusions regarding the causal direction of the associations
between the variables that we studied. Future research may wish to use longitudinal
research designs to address this issue.

For
further information about this research, please see the following journal
article:

About Me

I've published over 70 articles in the areas of is social identity, stereotyping, prejudice, and social exclusion, including research on counterstereotypicality, ingroup identification, intergroup contact, and perceived group variability. My other research interests include individualism and collectivism, risk-taking, the need for closure, social class, and mental health. For more information about my work, please visit his research website at: http://bit.ly/QgpV4O